Intro
Well, I'm back from a very interesting, tho short, trip to Romania. I'm going to divide up my report into several sections. First, a general introduction, then a bit about the housing market, then some background to the type of country it is and the opportunities that abound. I shall also do a bit of a travelog.
Getting there from the UK is simplicity itself. (Actually it's
easy to get there from Spain as well, with flights from Barcelona and
Valencia.) Wizzair have cheap flights most of the time. I flew out for
a little over £20, and got a flight back for just over £80.
With the taxes the total came to just over £120 return. It's a
three hour flight, and Romania is 2 hours ahead of UK time.
The main airport is at Otopeni, which is the outermost northern suburb of Bucharest, spelt locally Bucharesti, and pronounced Bucharesht. We flew to Baneasa, which is a smaller airfield closer to the centre of the city, and surrounded by new build. It is what you might call a local airport. It's small, with a couple of rooms, and a departure lounge. There is one cafe, and lots of ethnic bustle, a few provocative tarts, the usual complement of taxis, and people waving name tags. There is a circle of greenery the other side of a small access road where people sit about waiting for arrivals, or departures, and generally look bored. There are car hire facilities. Car hire should come to about 30 euros a day for a cheap box car.
Cheap hotels should come in at roughly the same price. If you are paying more then you are missing out on what is essentially Romanian. You will also be staying in the centre of Bucharest, in which case, good luck getting there!
I have stayed in hotels all over the centre and the south of the country. They have been mainly pensions and three star hotels. Most towns dont have anything above three star, and those places are fine by me. You get a room with a couple of beds, and an en-suite bathroom. Most include breakfast. You get t.v. in your room, and towels, and the usual bits, but not much else. The language may be a problem, and breakfast may be a bit unusual, but it's all good fun.
Let me go back a bit. Staying in central Bucharest? Great. Allow an hour or two to get there from Otopeni. I stayed in a pension just down the road from Otopeni airport. There are several within two kilometres that charge anything from 30 to 70 euros a night for two. Hotels in the town centre cost more, and the traffic in town is something else. It is easily the worst town I have ever driven through or round.
My first day there I tried to drive through every part of town. By the end of the day I was a nervous wreck. There are tree-lined wide boulevards that suddenly end in twisted chaos. Even the freeways suddenly jolt into car parks. There is just so much traffic it grinds to a halt, and stays that way. The street signs are not good either. And when you come down to it there really isn't anything to see. There are some interesting old buildings hiding amongst the shrubbery. There are lines of workers' housing estates which are falling down. Rows of tenaments line the street in their workaday grey, covered in grime, never having been painted. The balconies are collapsing. Squint along the lines of the windows and note how many are out of line. How long before the block collapses?
If you go to Brasov you will find the same dreary, collapsing housing estates. In fact most towns have them. It seems to be the norm. This is what you've come to see, not the art gallery, or the museums. You've also come to eat the petrol fumes, and stare bleakly at the back of the truck in front.
And if you think that using the ring-road to get from the
south side of the city back up to Otopeni is a good idea, think again.
I've tried that ruse as well. It doesn't work. I took just over one and
three quarters of an hour to do the trip. How far is it? I didn't clock
it but I would estimate it was about 25 kilometres.
The trouble is, they keep building more factories but dont sort out the logistics or the general infrastructure. Thus the ring-road (dont think north circular road, more like south circular, which the AA used to call a collection of signposts) is a collection of narrow, pot-holed side roads, with confusing signposts. Twice I followed the signs only to be taken in the wrong direction. I followed my sense of direction rather than the signs, so luckily I turned round before two much damage was done.
The hold-ups come because trucks need to turn into factories,
and thus hold up the flow. Or they park alongside the road so other
trucks cant pass or turn. Then there is a railway crossing which causes
serious chaos. Quite honestly, when the gates opened it was like a
rugger scrum, with minis battling it out with artics. This road is not
for the faint-hearted. I am quite an aggressive driver and even I was
deeply shocked at the goings on.
The two most common activities on the Bucharest roads (other than being
stationery for hours, which is scarcely an activity) is fighting bumper
to bumper, or doing U-turns. I did a heck of a lot of U-turns because
of the lousy signage.
In some hotels the provision of breakfast can cause trouble. Many simply advertise bed and breakfast, and breakfast is a standard commodity which is delivered to your table, and that's that. In most of the larger hotels however, you will be given a voucher for breakfast. This is not simply a voucher entitling you to breakfast. If you look carefully you will find a set figure which you can spend how you like listed on the voucher. You may have 10 ron you can spend, or maybe 15. If you spend more, you will be charged for the extra.
The first time we were given a breakfast voucher we assumed it
simply allowed us breakfast. The waiter turned up and asked if we
wanted toast, fruit, yoghurt, coffee, tea, etc. I naively assumed that
was breakfast, and was deeply shocked to be presented with a bill at
the end of the meal. I didn't pay it. "But you ordered all those
things." "No we didn't, you offered us those things. I thought that was
your standard breakfast." It was only at this point that someone
brought a menu and showed us a list of prices.
I dealt with the matter quite simply by leaving them all arguing about
the rights and wrongs of the situation.
But what exactly is 10 ron? The currency is supposed to be the leu (plural lei). But everyone seems to call it the ron, even the bank tills. There are about 3.3 to the euro, and about 5 to the pound sterling.
One thing missing in Romania is tourist information centres. You are completely on your own. Read the quide book before you leave home, and make copious notes.
Also, dont expect much English to be spoken. Romanian is a
romance language based on latin, like most of the west european
languages. It is similar to Italian as far as I can make out, but with
a lot of French and German influence, together with its own east
european individuality. Transylvania has a large German influence, and
one of the towns, Sibiu even sports a German name: Hermannstadt. In
fact Sibiu is European City of Culture for 2007. I will do a separate
article on the place as it is rather important.
In this part of the country, Transylvania, there is some
German spoken, and there are German hotels catering to touring parties
of Germans. There are also quite a lot of people who speak French. I
need to look up quite how this came about, but at the moment I am a bit
puzzled about it all, altho one person we stayed with tried to explain
this state of affairs.
Obviously there is a certain amount of Russian spoken, but English is
most certainly thin on the ground. This makes things a bit difficult
outside the main cities because all the menus are in Romanian only. Gen
up on the grub language before you come or you could be in trouble.
While all this sounds a bit intimidating the reality is that the folks are very friendly. They will probably try to rip you off, but with a few sensible approaches you can get round that, and I will give some examples of how we were ripped off, and what we learned in a later article.
The towns are generally very well planned, (with the exception of Bucharest), and all of them cater well for the people. There are wide pavements. There are large parks in every town; the people's parks, and they are littered with benches to sit on. This used to be a communist state. Everywhere are the people's benches. Most of the shaky tenement blocks are unfortunately the people's homes, which may or may not be collapsing some time soon.
On the other hand, we passed an unfortunate family camped out on the pavement. There was mum and dad, and daughter crying and constantly crossing herself, surrounded by their meagre belongings. I guess they are the people's pavements as well.
I thoroughly enjoyed my jaunt around the country except for Bucharest, which I will avoid like the plague in future. Next week I'll take a look at the country as a whole, and the property market.